I spent a wonderful day on Saturday at my local quilt shop, Quilters Haven, on a class with the very talented Helen Howes, making an "Embellished Landscape" wallhanging. I have been on several classes with Helen in the past, and she is a fantastic tutor. As you can see, I had decided to make my wallhanging in suble neutral shades, so raided my stash box (actually I've got several stash boxes!!) for an assortment of creams and whites and beiges and lace and ric-rac and buttons - well, you get the general idea - and then it was time to get ready and let those creative juices start flowing!!.........
.....first of all we played about with fabrics and bondaweb, and started to create our landscape design with some fusible applique, (and yes we all has to actually DRAW our own designs, which was probably the most stressful part of the day as I can't draw at all!!). I felt very inspired by my recent trip to Norway, so was remembering those magnificent mountains and fjords when I was choosing my fabrics and trying to put my ideas onto paper!....
.....then the fun really stared with some confetti quilting - lots of bits of fabric randomly placed and covered with net and then we were let loose with free motion quilting. I added a few twirly bits with some metallic gold thread. Hmmm - could this resemble the "moraine". This was followed by learning how to make chenille - this was a bit tricky as we had to cut through several layers of fabric, but was made much easier once I'd invested in a Clover Slash Cutter, which was much easier than cutting through all those layers of fabric with a pair of scissors. This piece just has to be washed andd dried to "fluff" it up and make it a bit more textured. Helen then showed us how to pleat fabric - again, this was done completely randomly - we didn't have to press any fabric or measure anything - we just pleated the fabric wherever we wanted to. I think this will represent a "glacier" on my wallhanging! The last thing we made were 3-D leaves. These will be added to the landscape wallhanging at the end, once all the other parts are arranged (arftully of course!!), sewn together and quilted. Helen's final flourish to the day was to show us how to add some foil to our finished wallhanging - this will be added to mine once it is completed and quilted. I always enjoy classes with Helen, as we learn so much from her - and it was great meeting up with some quilting friends, Lesley and Mary, and making new friends too. Now, please excuse me while I carry on quilting and get this finished!
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